Photographs taken in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, a zone hard hit by emigration on a national scale. This social dynamic has fractured families in the region, leaving them missing loved ones. The images are taken on houses that bring together the houses built by the emigrants, their families, projections of the emigrant.

Projecting the the migrant’s portrait on the space they once inhabited is to go back momentarily to the previous relationship they held with those who stayed behind and the household that remained behind, but at the same time the projected image cannot overcome its insubstantiality based in light, this insubstantiality that’s part of life for the people who are gone. Joining the image with the forsaken household, the family who remained behind and the projection of a departed migrant is an exercise in melancholy, a desire to reconstruct previous relationships, to re-inhabit that which has been forsaken, and to erase for an instant that expectation of homecoming.

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About sesshu

The woman slapping tortilla shapes makes like the rain hitting the cement floor. I like the smell of charcoal smoke, rotting vegetables and sheet metal rust. I think about it when it's 100 degrees and I'm driving in the desert.